Within Your Eyes
by Chaytel Solverre
Summary: After the events of Starfox: Assault the Aparoids are gone, but Corneria is in ruins. The StarFox team sets out on a salvage run to Katina, but will be faced with a freak accident and personal crisis that may prevent any of them from making it back alive.
1. Prologue

**Within Your Eyes**

**Prologue**

**The Fires of Corneria**

The Lylat System had seen better days. It had seen worse, too, but there weren't many left alive who remembered them. And now, in the wake of the Aparoid War, there weren't many left alive, period. The outpost and staging center at Katina was annihilated early in the fighting. Beautiful, cosmopolitan Corneria was in smoking ruins, and countless deep space stations and platforms that connected the planets of the system were nothing but space debris, now.

Piracy had seen an explosive growth, with almost no long range space transportation left and the peacekeeping forces devastated and scattered, bands of rogues and mercenaries plundered what few colonies and transports still existed. There was no way to reach them with such limited space transport, and the great Orbital Gate at Corneria had been disabled since the Aparoids swarmed it just after the Star Fox Team passed through on their fateful mission to the Aparoid Homeworld. Now, three months after the end of the war, the Lylat Sytem seemed to be a silent, dead space.

But that was about to change.

"Relay Three-Seven-Five checks out. You get that, bridge?" the static voice of a young man came in over the command center of the Orbital Gate. It had been refurbished and repaired, at least partly; there were still panels missing from the floor and the walls, tools lay scattered about, and some of the burn marks hadn't been scrubbed away yet, but it was now, at least serviceable.

"Reading you loud and clear, John." "A young tiger sat in a chair at one of the numerous computer terminals on the bridge, listening intently into his headset with a faint smile. "That leaves five more to go, sound 'em off..."

The voice came in over his headset again, from deep within the rings of the gate generators themselves. Months of repairs to the massive orbital platform had taken them this far, the individual relay points for the warp field were all online now, or at least all but five, so far. The skeleton crew on the bridge held their breath as the Tiger relayed the words to them from his chair. "John says Three-Seven-Six is a go… Three-Double-Sevens is a go. Three-Seven-Eight… is in the yellow, but she's transmitting strong, go. Three-Seven-Nine looks like a go."

Time hung for them all, for what seemed like forever, until a smile crept over the tiger's tired face. "Three-Eighty is a go!" A weary, but excited cheer swept through the bridge, the crew throwing their hands up and shouting happily, the long hours every day of every week had come to fruition.

The only one silent on the bridge was seated in the captain's chair. He was a white wolf, about forty years old from the look of him, dressed in a slightly tattered bright red military dress suit. After the happy clamor died down, he arose slowly, the worn chair creaking slightly. "Sinclair, how's your end?"

A skunk towards the head of the bridge stood up, saluting and smiling. "Sir! PowerTrans is showing green clear across the board! All I need is the order!"

A faint smile crept across the captain's rough features, and he folded his hands behind his back, after slicking his hair back and replacing his red and black officer's hat. "Open the viewing window, and begin gate sequence."

Sinclair nodded and sat back down with a "Yes, sir!" a few button presses later and the top panel of the massive viewing window at the front of the bridge began to slide up. The bottom panel hung and shook for a few moments before it, too, slid away, leaving faint scratches in the already chipped window surface but revealing the great rings of their orbital station's warp gate generator. "Gate Sequence engaged." The first of the three overlaid rings began to slowly rotate, as it turned, picking up speed and briefly shaking the station for a few frightening moments, a faint blue glow began to surround it, exciting the bridge crew further.

"Ring One reporting success. All clear. Ring Two engaged." Sinclair looked up from his station and watched with the others as the outer ring locked into place, and the middle ring began its own turns. Slowly they saw the glow expand and focus, filling the flat space inside the gateway with ambient, brilliant hues of blue and white. "Ring Two says all clear. Engaging Ring Three."

The captain nodded a little, biting his lip in stressed anticipation as the middle ring slid to a stop and locked in place, sending the smaller inner ring moving along it, slowly at first. A minute passed and it picked up the proper speed, generating the last field and making the gate flare with blue brilliance, along its rippling and pulsing surface.

Sinclair's smile burst into a full grin and he rose from his station, saluting. "Ring Three says all clear! The portal is open!"

The Captain looked back over his shoulder. "Stability Monitoring?"

"They say she's as stable as they come, sir!" A female voice came from behind several large terminals behind him. "We have a stable portal!"

Turning back to view the brilliant blue gateway to anywhere, the Captain nodded again, saluting his crew. "Well done! Let's give our friends on the planet a call and let them know."

There were many massive structures on Corneria visible from space, though not many had made it through the war; but the Orbital Gate had the distinction of being the only structure in space that was visible from Corneria. Its brilliant blue gate lit up the night sky to choruses of cheers in the remnants of the capitol, and the Cornerian Anthem played proudly. Today was the day.

Back on the station, the tiger at Communications laughed as he replaced his headset. "I think they know, sir, they're calling US." He had a brief conversation with someone thorough his headset. "Yes, General, I'll tell him. Very stable, yes. Okay, over and out." Taking off the communications headset he swiveled around in his chair to face the white wolf. "General Pepper sends his regards 'on a job well done' sir. He says we can begin the mission as soon as possible."

With a relaxed sigh, the captain sat back in his chair, smiling as he looked into the radiance of the warp portal. "Give McCloud and his people on the _Vissago_ a shout, then. Tell them we're ready to send them through now."


	2. Chapter 1

**Within Your Eyes**

**Chapter 1**

**Through The Sea of Stars**

On the opposite side of Corneria, in high orbit over the war-scarred world, The _Vissago_ drifted silently. Formerly a mining vessel, the hulking old brown and gray boxy ship had been damaged in the fighting, but unlike most other ships, the sheer mass of the _Vissago_ kept it in one piece through it all. It had been conscripted by the Cornerian army shortly after the war, but they soon realized it was too slow, too big, and too old to be much use to them. Changing hands several times in the following months, it finally found its way into the hands of a famous, heroic, and at the time, wealthy band of mercenary pilots for the tidy sum of almost everything they had.

Oh, how they regretted the purchase. Fox McCloud paced beside the large window of his bedroom aboard their new ship. He looked out across the sea of stars, and glanced down at the planet, still blackened and burned in places. It would be a long time before Corneria was the green and white gem of Lylat again. Those were better times, before the war, before the ravaging of the system… before his ship blew up.

The _Great Fox_ had had everything going for it. It was sleek, fast, armed, well stocked, comfortable… and in the aftermath of the self destructive explosion that consumed it, probably scattered from there to Venom. It had been everything the _Vissago_ was not. The _Vissago_ was blocky, slow, rusted, unarmed, and miserably cramped with boxes from the last several owners, but it had been the only way to get off of Corneria when they'd bought it. Fox couldn't stand to live planet-side, his home was in the stars… on the _Vissago_. Home, dysfunctional home.

Now broke, frustrated, and stuck waiting for his new employers in the Cornerian government to fix the Orbital Gate, Fox McCloud sat down on the corner of his small bed, still staring out the window. He was in the middle of removing his boots when there was a loud beep from his door, and he turned his head to face it. "Come in…" He already knew who it would be.

The door slid open and Krystal stepped inside, wearing her blue flightsuit. "Hello Fox." She smiled. "We haven't seen you all day, are you all right?"

"Yeah… I'm as all right as I ever am." He looked up at her, then chuckled. "You look like you plan on flying somewhere."

"I might be, if we're lucky." The blue vixen smirked at him. "Captain Roberts just contacted us about the mission and we-"

Fox shot up from where he sat; hopping on one foot as he eagerly pulled a boot back on. "We're gonna get out of here? Was that flash earlier the gate? It's working again?"

"Yes, on all three accounts." His exuberance on the matter gave her a chuckle as she nodded to him, picking up his flight jacket from the hanger in his closet and offering it to him. "I don't think anyone wants to get out of here as much as you seem to, Fox. Why is that?"

Donning his jacket, he thought about the best way to answer, but she interrupted him before he could open his mouth.

"Home is where you make it, though." Krystal paused, then laughed quietly. "Oh. I'm sorry, I don't mean to do that. Sometimes I hear what you think so clearly I mistake it for something you've already said."

"Hey, I don't mind it." Fox dug his headset and a blaster out of a nearby box and holstered the weapon on his belt. "Like you told me before, it just means we're really close, right? I'm not gonna complain."

This got a smile out of the vixen, and she nodded to him before turning around. "All right, I'll take the lift back up and meet you on the bridge."

Fox double checked to make sure he had everything, when he suddenly remembered, "Hey, don't open the lift door, it's full of-" He was cut off by the loud crash and feminine 'Ooof!' just down the hall from his room. "…Boxes."

(So I see.) Krystal's voice echoed in his head. (Mind helping with digging me out of here?) Her thoughts had a less than subtle tone of annoyance about them; it was obviously not the first time she'd been caught in an avalanche of junk on the ship.

"I'll be right there…" Fox shouted back to her, shaking his head and closing the door to his quarters behind him.

… … …

Fox tripped over a stack of box lids as he entered the bridge, groaning from the blow to his shin. "Ugh… Can't we just vent this junk out the airlocks and be DONE with it!"

"Hey!" A high pitched voice called out from behind a tall console, amid the clanging of tools on metal. The unmistakable green face of Slippy Toad emerged from over the console. "It may be junk, but it's OUR junk, Fox! We haven't even opened half of it all yet, who knows what great stuff might be in some of these boxes?"

"I think you're missing a key point here, Slippy." The perpetually disdainful voice of Falco Lombardi echoed as he rotated his chair to face them. "If any of these boxes were worth ANYthing to ANYone, ANYwhere, then at least one of the half-dozen previous owners should have taken them all with them when they left! It's ALL trash."

"Well, you know, one person's trash is another person's treasure," Slippy retorted.

"Treasure!" The bird shot back, and then looked up at Fox and Krystal. "Hey, I'll show you two some of this treasure we keep finding in boxes here on our big flying junkyard." He stood up, looking for something in particular. "Where's that one I opened this morning… Oh yeah, it's over there!" He crossed the room to a large crate and lifted the lid, chuckling. "You two are gonna love this one, this is my favorite box so far." He removed a large stack of flat-folded, new cardboard boxes from within, and his gesture indicated there were plenty more still inside. "Yeah." He nodded to them. "It's a _box, _full of _boxes._ You know, just in case you might need a few hundred more boxes to store even more useless garbage in, we've got extras. This whole ship is like some deranged quartermaster's sick joke!"

"Enough, you two." Krystal interjected before Slippy and Falco were at one another's throats any worse. "We'll worry about the boxes later, once we have the time and money to do something with them. For now, we need to get moving; I think Captain Roberts will be hailing us any mo-"

"Good Morning, Star Fox." A soft blip announced the communication channels opening, and the holographic image of Captain Roberts saluted them as he flickered into view. "I trust you are all well?"

Fox sat down in the captain's chair of the bridge, saluting back. "Captain Roberts. We're all fine here, better with the news about the gate."

Roberts smiled a little, laughing to himself. "So you did see the flash, then. I suppose it goes without saying, we're all set for you here. Bring the _Vissago_ around the planet for gating as soon as possible."

"Already on our way!" Fox continued working with a small set of controls on the arm of his chair, practically beaming with the thought of getting to leave for anywhere but here. "We'll be at the gate in less than ten minutes."

"You seem strangely happy about salvaging planetary debris, Fox." Captain Roberts smiled at him from the viewscreen, "Getting stir crazy out here?"

"Just a bit, captain." The fox replied, donning his headset and finalizing the course to the gate. "Falco, speed us up, will ya?"

"Gladly." Falco adjusted the controls on the terminal he was next to, checking his monitor and confirming their speed. "The ol' space slug is as fast as she'll go, now, I doubled our speed."

"…You… doubled our speed? …Dare I ask? Because… umm… We don't seem to be moving." Slippy poked his head up from behind a stack of boxes that obscured both the engineering terminal and himself.

"Yep. The readout said we were moving at 'one', and now we're moving at 'two'. That's as high as it goes." The ship shuddered slightly, and the power on the bridge cut out, closing all communications and bathing them in darkness as their momentum slowed down, now only carried by orbit, towards the gate.

"…Slippy…" Fox's voice raised, at the end of the word, angrily.

"The rubberband on the engine broke again." Falco piped in. "She just couldn't take speeds like 'two'."

"I fixed it!" Slippy shouted in the darkness. "I know I fixed it!" The emergency power came back, and then full power a moment later, allowing them to move onward. "See? It came back!"

"Slippy. You're absolutely SURE the warp drive WILL function once it's been charged by a jump through the gate… right?" Fox inquired, more than a hint of worry in his voice.

"Yes! I checked it out five times already! There's nothing wrong with it now."

"There better not be," Falco complained. "'Cause I don't wanna walk home from… where are we going, anyhow?"

"Katina." Fox and Kystal said, nodding in unison for a brief moment. The bridge fell silent, and Fox sighed a little, rubbing his forehead.

"Sorry Fox." She chuckled a little. "I don't mean to keep doing that."

Captain Roberts regained the signal, his image reappearing on the small projector in the floor of the bridge. "Welcome back, Star Fox. I trust your ship is functionally prepared for gate travel?"

"Yes sir," Fox nodded, casting a slight glare at his amphibian engineer. We just had a minor power cutout. We are riding orbit towards you as we speak."

"Excellent. Correct the _Vissago_'s heading nine degrees starboard and you'll coast right through the gate when you get here. Before I forget, though… Corneria City is hailing for you."

"Patch them through to us, Captain." Fox stretched out in his chair, trying to look professional.

"Good to see you, Fox!" The aged visage of Peppy Hare appeared on the viewscreen just moments after his greeting echoed over the bridge of the ship. "I was worried you'd leave before I could wish you well!"

"It's good to see you too, Peppy." McCloud smiled, standing up and half-saluting his old friend and mentor.

Krystal smiled. "Hello Peppy. I hope General Pepper is feeling better?"

"He's recovering, and he told me to give you… all of you, his regards and well-wishes for your mission. He should make a full recovery, in time. Don't worry about him, or me."

"We're gonna miss you out there, Peppy…" Slippy noted, his smile melting a little.

Falco crossed his arms, nodding. "Yeah, you sure you don't wanna come along for one last mission, old man? Won't be the same without ya."

"I think…" The old rabbit paused, considering it for just a moment. "I think I've gotten a little bit too old, now, Falco. I'll stay planet-side from now on. I want you all to be careful out there, we don't know anything about the state of the system outside our limited scan range."

"We will be, Peppy." Fox assured him, sitting back down and relaxing. "It's time for us to head out, we're at the gate. We'll talk in person when we get back home, okay?"

"All right, Fox. Good luck to you, Peppy out."

Moments later, a holographic Captain Richards reappeared on the bridge of the _Vissago_, though he seemed more distressed now. "I'm afraid we just had a critical power failure in the third ring of the gate. We have enough charge built up to use it, but only once. If you still want to go through… we can send you, but there will be no rescuers sent if anything goes wrong."

"Well…" As much as he wanted to go, he wasn't about to risk anyone else if they were against it. Fox sweeped his eyes across the bridge at his three companions; Slippy nodded to him enthusiastically, Falco glared at him, obviously annoyed at the idea of scrapping the mission and Krystal, ever unreadable, simply arched an eyebrow at him and smirked, resting a hand on his shoulder. "We're making our approach Captain, start the gate sequence now." Fox looked over his friends and wingmen one more time, smiling. "Let's see what's out there."

Richards looked over his shoulder and nodded to someone outside the view of the holographic cameras, saying something silently before turning to face them. "You're clear for transit, maintain course and you'll coast right through the gate." He offered them a crisp salute, and bowed his head a little. "…Good luck, Star Fox. Orbital Gate, out."

"This is it…" Falco leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on the console in front of him and folding his arms over his chest as he looked through the bridge window at the gate, its large outer ring glowing blue as it picked up rotational speed, transferring power to the other rings. "Here's hoping this thing doesn't send us off to Katina in pieces."

The first ring became a rippling blur as the middle ring began its own spin, plotting the direction that it would open a warp rift towards. They were closing on the gate now, and the blue light began to bathe the surface of their ship and invade the bridge with its serene glow. "Well, there's number two." Slippy commented.

The final, inner ring of the gateway picked up speed, set the distance to the warp's exit, and delivered its charge to the open space it encircled. There was a roar of energy, a brilliant flash, and the portal formed, softly thrumming with light and sound as the _Vissago_ drifted towards it. The entire bridge was bathed in blue, and their view was filled by the massive portal, looming just moments away. "It's pretty, up close…" Krystal quietly noted, almost invisible amidst all the blue light washing over everything around them. "And brighter than I remember…" She shielded her eyes alongside Fox, Slippy, and Falco, as the nose of the blocky merchant vessel pierced the rippling energies of the gate and the bridge passed through subspace. The field of energy swelled, swallowing the tail of the _Vissago_ as it passed through, then vanished with a loud electrical crackle, leaving nothing but dark, empty space in the rings.

The crew of the station cheered, celebrating their success amid the pop of corks and the claps of applause. Roberts took his cap off and ran a hand through his short white hair, graciously accepting a small glass of champagne from an aid. For better or worse, their job was done now. The hopes and dreams of Corneria and her isolated children now rested with Star Fox.


	3. Chapter 2

**Within Your Eyes**

**Chapter 2**

**The Ashes of History**

When space and time folded back into normalcy, the _Vissago_ was in orbit around a dead world. Katina was always a bit inhospitable, but now it was positively horrific. The Aparoids had altered the atmosphere to suit them, and after they all ceased to be, the planet had run amok. The ship dropped into orbit over an endless globe of storms and flashes of lightning; the only distinguishable feature of the planet was the remnants of the Aparoid hive spire, jutting up through the clouds like a great pointed monolith.

The Aparoids connected entire planets to the hive mind with these massive spires. They served as foci for the queen's powerful psychic presence. Their structure was important, rather than their composition, and so they were often cobbled together from anything present on the planet.

Fox had been prepared for a devastated world, but he hadn't imagined the sheer chaos the Aparoid race had left behind. If Katina had been called a dead world when it was a settled desert planet, it was an angry spirit of a world now. "What… happened?" Fox shook his head, watching the displays on his chair's screen. The Aparoids didn't ravage worlds like this, they were… orderly."

"Maybe they were in the middle of terraforming it when they all..." Slippy searched for the word. "Well… disintegrated." He looked over readouts from the ship's dilapidated sensor array, listing off important facts. "Breathable atmosphere… mostly. REALLY heavy moisture content in the air. Looks like the storms don't end, either. No life at all."

Falco pointed at the tip of the spire, poking from the clouds on the main screen of the bridge. "What the heck is that thing? Doesn't look like the spires we saw back on the homeworld. Zoom in on that thing."

As soon as Slippy zoomed in on the structure, the entire team regretted the curiosity. The spire didn't look the same because it was unfinished and no longer coated in the connective substances that went away with the Aparoids themselves. For the first time, the underlying structure of the spires was understood. The top that poked through the clouds contained anything and everything. Fox noted parts from a blasted-out Landmaster Tank, pieces of the Katina military base, cloth from uniforms, and most macabre of all, a skeletal hand near the top, reaching up into empty space. With the Aparoids, went the connective tissues holding it all together, and occasionally, a tiny part would fall off as the tower came undone. The spire made a disturbingly fitting monument to the war. "Turn it off." But it wasn't one he cared to stare at.

Krystal seemed the most upset by the sight, turning away from it and holding her head with a groan. "I… I'm sorry. Excuse me." She stepped back and turned, leaving the bridge.

Fox followed her before the doors closed. "It's okay Krystal… I'm kind of disturbed at it too."

"No… no it's not just that. " She shook her head, obviously suffering from a headache. "It's the Aparoids. There were so many, so loud… It's disorienting."

"Aparoids?" Fox blinked. "You hear them again? Are there still some out there?" He placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her. "Maybe you should lay down, huh? You look like you're really sick."

"No… no there aren't any left, Fox." She looked up at him, shaking her head woozily. "It's just that spire… so many echoes from it, so much noise… I guess I'm just picking up the old signals still bouncing around. Those spires are like… hotspots for anything psychic. Even you are doing it now."

It was then that Fox realized neither of them had said a word during their whole conversation; it had all been telepathic. "Wow…"

"I… really want to talk to you, Fox… I've been meaning to for a while now." Krystal looked at him and sighed, obviously upset.

"Why now, all of a sudden?"

"Well…" She began, "I just have this terrible feeling about all this, and I wanted to tell you, while we were alone together, before we go out there, Fox. I… I-"

"Hey!" Falco's shout startled Fox and he spun around just in time to catch his flightsuit and helmet as it flew at him. "Quit standin' around, hot shot! We got a job to do out there! A PAYING job."

"…Yeah." Fox gritted his teeth at the bird, narrowing his eyes a little. "I'll be right there, Falco…" He turned back to his blue-furred companion and sighed. "Sorry Krystal. What did you want to tell me?"

She smiled a little. "It will wait until we get back. We do have a job to do." She patted him on the shoulder and walked away to get suited for their flight.

"Okay, you guys," Slippy's voice crackled over the comm. "My Arwing's still out of commission. Krystal, yours SHOULD be working now, and the other two checked out fine. ROB, is the hangar checking out okay?"

ROB had suffered system-wide infection and severe damage in the escape from the Great Fox, and rather than lay inoperable while an overworked Slippy tried to make time to fix him, the A.I. had opted to be uploaded to the _Vissago_'s computer, where he carried out his usual duties.

"The hangar bay is operational. I will perform a full ship-wide status check after the flight mission has completed." His monotone mechanical voice droned from the flight control area's speakers. "Diverting power from all unrelated-nonessential ship systems until completion."

"Okay Star Fox," Slippy returned to the comm. channel, "are you all ready for launch?"

"Falco here. Everything shows green."

"Fox. Born ready, just let me out there."

"This is Krystal. I'm reading… some sort of discrepancy with my position. I think there may be a problem with my navicomputer or the… wait, no, it's working again. I'm ready for launch."

"Good luck out there, guys. I'm depressurizing the hangar now. A loud rushing permeated the hangar as the air vented from the hangar doors as they slid apart, opening space to the three sealed fighter craft. One by one, their engines hummed to life and they shot out of their launch gantries, out into the cold silence of space, high above the stormy planet below.

"Yaaaahooooo!" Fox did a barrel roll in his Arwing, laughing like a young boy at the thrill of being back in the cockpit after so long stuck onboard the hated _Vissago_. "I thought I'd NEVER get off that thing!"

"For once, I agree with you, Fox." Falco joked through the comm. "I actually need a sec to get used to the handling again."

"Slippy did a good job with mine…" Krystal pulled into formation behind them. "I think everything is fully repaired. I'm ready for maneuvers when you..." her communication went static.

"Krystal, I think you have a communications problem. Are you reading?" Fox tried to hand signal her, but she couldn't see around to his cockpit. "Whoa! Pull back a little!"

"H-hey!" Falco gestured at her, but she was tapping her control console and not looking, obviously trying to get communications back with them. "Your navicomputer must still be screwy, you're too close to us! Hey, do you read?"

"Nega…ve cop… …omething's wron…. the G Dif…ser…" Krystal's Arwing was slowly lurching downward towards Fox's, and she was completely unaware of her misplaced position on her navigation.

"Pull UP girl!" Falco fumbled with the flightstick to bring his weapon online; he wanted to fire a shot into space to catch her attention. "Pull up! You're coming down right on his nose! PULL UP!"

Fox tried to swing down, but his hand scarcely gripped the control before Krystal's right wing sheared off the nose of his ship and his dashboard exploded in his face. He screamed, and everything went black.


	4. Chapter 3

**Within Your Eyes**

**Chapter 3**

**Breakdown**

"Oh man…" Falco slowly stabilized his ship from the nearby explosion that sent it reeling. Krystal had unwittingly crashed right into Fox, and now the bird strained with his flightstick, panning around to get his bearings and find them. "Oh…. Geez…" He'd found them. There was part or Krystal's Arwing; just a single wing remained, embedded in the front of Fox's ship. The vixen was gone. Her ship was nowhere to be seen amongst the sea of space borne debris that orbited the planet; presumably it had been what exploded in the collision. "N…no way… No way…" Fox was unconscious or dead in his cockpit; head slumped forward with a bloody gash from the shrapnel. His ship was devastated, the nose was gone, and his controls looked to be fried; smoke was filling the cockpit.

Most worrisome was that smoke was LEAVING the cockpit. There was a pinpoint hole in the glass, venting the thick gray gas in a pressurized plume along with the fox's breathable air. It was getting worse, slowly. Falco watched, horrified, as the glass around the hole chipped and sent tiny, faint cracks outward from the pressure change. It was going to explosively decompress, and soon; if it did, there would be no more need for guesswork as to whether he was dead or not. "J-just hang in there buddy… I'll get you…"

"Hey! Anybody out there?" Slippy chimed in on the blue bird's comm. "What was that big flash out there!"

"Slippy!" Falco fairly shouted back. "We just… we just had a crash! I… I think Krystal is… dead, and Fox is in BIG trouble, we have to get him back to the ship, right now! I don't think I can just shove him back with my Arwing!"

There was silence on the comm. Finally, after a moment of nerve-wracking quiet, the toad spoke up, obviously upset as well. "…Okay, nudge his Arwing over towards the bow of the _Vissago_… I'll try and catch him with the cargo loader arm!"

"That thing! That thing isn't made for delicate work, if it crushes his…" There was no time for Falco to argue. A tiny fleck of the cockpit glass popped out near the first hole in his friend's ship, venting like the other hole. "Okay. I'm moving around him right now… hang in there buddy…" Falco carefully dug the pointed nose of his ship into a gash in the fuselage of Fox's broken Arwing, almost face to face with the unconscious vulpine as he slowly lurched forward, pushing it along, hands gripping the controls a little tighter for each time he saw a crack snake across the cockpit glass. "I'm coming right for it, Slippy… you better know how to use that arm…"

The paddle-like grippers of the _Vissago_'s loading arm slowly opened, and it began to lurch out towards the two interlocked ships. It was a tool meant to grab special hooks on unmanned cargo skiffs and drag them into the hangar, not for delicate work like pulling a crippled starfighter back to safety. Falco watched until the grippers began to slowly close on them, he closed his eyes for that, and broke a sweat. "If I were the praying type of guy…"

"I've got you! I'm pulling you in now." Slippy's voice made the bird jump, but he opened his eyes and sighed in relief. Fox's Arwing was still holding together. Slippy painstakingly pulled the two into the hangar and closed the doors. "Give it a moment; the vents are pressurizing the hangar now."

Falco waited for the green light on his pressure gauge with nervous anticipation, finally bailing out and sliding down the wing to the hangar floor once the atmosphere returned. Slippy was in the hangar moments later with speed surprising for a member of his species. Falco was closest and beat him to the mutilated Arwing; the cockpit glass shattered completely the moment he touched it, momentarily stunning the bird in a state of awe. "Whoa… It just…"

Slippy pulled their companion out of the wreckage, dragging him back from the smoking ship. "He's still breathing!"

"Yeah, good work, Slip, move his spine around some more while you're at it!" Falco took the fox from him and picked him up, trying to keep his back flat. "Get the doors for me, he needs to get to the medical bay!"

"Falco, his eyes are…"

"I SEE that, come on, Slippy!"

"R-right, come on!" The toad bounded off, opening doors and clearing boxes out of the way en route to the _Vissago_'s modest medical center.

Fox woke up to darkness. He could faintly perceive a bright light in his face, but he couldn't see. His arms and legs were bound to some sort of cushion that he was laying on, and there were faint voices speaking with one another. _'Unhh… where am I? Am I dead?' _He thought silently, and sharp pains in his face answered him. He was most certainly alive, but as the pains in his face and chest returned, part of him wished he wasn't. The fox shuddered from the piercing pains in his body, straining in his restraints and letting out a long groan.

There was a quiet commotion nearby. A moment later, the sound of a sliding door and two sets of footsteps quietly entering the room with him. Hushed voices. "I saw him move, I tell ya." Falco. "I know, I think I saw him shake a little." Slippy. Fox could faintly perceive his blue-feathered co-pilot lean in close to him. He whispered to him quietly. "Hey… you awake?"

"F… Falco?" Fox muttered back. "That you?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's me, Fox. Slippy's here with us too." Falco put a hand out to his injured friend and halted, his hand hovering over the fox as he struggled internally with whether or not he should touch him, and whether or not it was going to hurt if he did in the first place. Finally he simply took the fox's hand and held it.

"Wha… what happened, Falco? Where are we?" Fox stammered slightly, the pain making it difficult to talk or think.

"You're in the _Vissago_'s medical bay, Fox." Falco sighed to him. "…There was a crash."

"A crash?" Fox repeated back, in a dazed slur. "What'd… I hit?"

"Well…" Falco stammered. "You got a right to know… There was some kind of… trouble with Krystal's navigation systems…"

"No…" It was coming back to him now.

"She hit you right across the nose…" Falco's voice trailed off, and Slippy was equally silent.

"Where is she?" Fox asked, weakly. "Is she… hurt?"

"…she's dead, Fox. I'm sorry." Falco patted him on the shoulder, awkwardly. I… looked for her, out there, but in all that powdered debris… there's just no way she could make it. I'm sorry."

"You didn't find her!" Fox tried to shoot out of bed, but was painfully reminded of his restraints. "Y-you have to make sure! She could be out there waiting for me to save her! You can't just STOP!" Pain suddenly wracked his face and upper body as he strained and struggled on the bed. "Augh! AAAAHHH!"

Falco held his shoulders down and Slippy grabbed the fox's feet to stop his violent flailing. "Give him something already, ROB, geez!"

Fox heard a whirr and a click to his side; then felt a sharp prick. Cool comfort radiated from the spot with surprising speed and his mind clouded over. "I have administered a strong painkiller. It will last many hours, but his mind may suffer temporary side effects."

"Such as?" Falco asked, from over Fox's torso.

"Headache, mild dementia, hallucinations. Nothing severe."

"Great…" The bird sighed loudly. "Just what he needs right n…" The bright light in Fox's eyes faded, and he could hear the groan of the ship as it lost power again. "Slippy!"

"It's not my fault!" Slippy shouted back. "Everything was working fine when we left! ROB, run a diagnostic on… ROB?"

"Looks like ROB's out until the power comes back. Come on, Slip, we better go take a look in the engine room."

"What about Fox?"

There was a pause, in silence. "..I think he's out. He'll be okay until we get back." Two sets of footsteps, and the soft hiss of the door as they pulled it open and shut it back.

… … …

"Uuurrrgh!" Falco grunted and groaned against a heavy blast door, his back pressed against it with his fingers behind him. He'd been working on prying it open for a good five minutes, and it showed in his expression. "You could help here, you know!"

"Well… I mean I.." Slippy stammered, watching his companion strain against the engine room door. "I have to get through when you open it and all… if I'm pulling, I might not have time."

After a long, strained groan, Falco shouted back, "I have hollow bones! I'm not BUILT for prying open this door! Gaahh… Who puts a blast door in front of the engine room and… uuuugh… Doesn't put it on another power supply?"

"Maybe I can run down to the shop and get a powered set of clamps or something…" Slippy turned to head to his workshop, but Falco caught his attention.

"I…. Got it! Grrraaagh!" With one last heave, he pulled, then slid under and pushed the door all the way up, he stood under it and strained to hold it open. "Go, Slippy!"

Slippy gasped, looking past the blue bird into the room beyond. "Th-th-the engine room is-"

"Slippy! I can't hold it! Come ON!"

"But… the engine room… how can that be possible?"

Falco could wait no longer, letting go of the door, he leapt backwards, blindly into the engine room. After the loud clang of the door returning to the floor, Slippy heard the bird's screaming as he fell, and landed with a loud thud into what sounded like cardboard boxes. Silence, then a muffled "Ow… What the he… oh, tell me I am not seeing this!"

Slippy took a step back, shaking his head and trying to comprehend what he'd seen when the door was opened. "The whole engine room… is gone?" It was as if everything within a certain radius of the Engine, walls, floors, ceilings… had vanished.

… … …

Alone in the dark, Fox sighed, still in disbelief. "She can't be gone…" He whispered to himself, quietly. "She can't be… I know she must still be out there, waiting for me! I know it!" He slammed his fist for emphasis. "Wait…" He slammed it down again, then both arms, then a leg. "The restraints unlocked?" Carefully, Fox blindly stumbled out of the bed, the pain in his chest and face spiking when he moved from his rested position.

"Help me…"

Fox's ears perked suddenly. Was he not alone? "Who's there?"

"Please… someone help me…"

"Krystal!" Fox spun around to face where he thought it had come from and fell over, groaning. He was sure he'd heard her. "I'll help you! Where are you?"

"Anyone, please, if you can hear me…"

Fox shakily stood back up. He couldn't be imagining it… but the voice was distant, not coming from the room, not even coming from anywhere, it seemed like. It almost came from… "My head." Realization dawned on him. Krystal was calling for help, telepathically. She was alive, but where? Furthermore, why could he pick her up from all the way on the ship if she was outside it somewhere?

"Please help…"

The Aparoid spire, of course! It had been amplifying her psychic abilities ever since they came into planetary orbit! If he could hear her now, so plainly, she must be on the planet!

Fox crashed into a cart of medical supplies, toppling over with it and crashing to the floor, and it was there, on the smooth, sterile floor that he realized the scope of his predicament. If he couldn't see, then how could he search for someone, let alone pilot a ship down to the planet? For that he was going to need help, he was going to need-

"ROB?" Nothing. No one answered from the darkness all around him. "_Power's really out, then… okay, okay, new plan. Think, Fox_." He felt slowly for a wall, and pulled himself up it, to get his bearings. "_From the bed to here, now from here to find a door_." He was in the medical bay; that much he knew. There was only one door out. Or was there a second door on the other side? He cursed himself for not walking his ship, not memorizing every detail in all the time he'd had idle on board. He'd always considered the _Vissago _disposable, a temporary thing until he could work his way back to a proper command ship, something forgettable and to be discarded. Now he was realizing how much he'd taken it and so many other things for granted. He never stopped to learn the ship, never stopped to tell Krystal how he felt… if she was dead, now, he couldn't live with himself.

But that couldn't be right. He'd heard her voice moments before, hadn't he? Or was it the painkillers messing with his senses? ROB had said something about hallucinations… He slumped against the wall, only to be deposited on the floor when the door opened and dumped him into the hall.

"_Ugh… automatic doors are on the backup power… okay, I'm in a hall, now. Which hall? I can't remember…_" He shuddered with pain as he dragged himself up to his feet, only to trip over a box and fall again. Damned boxes! They were in every hall and every room. How could he navigate through the cluttered ship, find the hangar, and pilot an Arwing in his condition?

But wait, that was right. They were in literally every hall, and he'd spent so long dodging them that he knew where the vast majority of them were sitting, since no one bothered with them or moved them once they were piled along the sides of the halls. What was that story about how people navigated in ancient times? By the stars? He would navigate by box.

"_Two high… three sets_." The blinded, delirious fox felt his way past a set of boxes, nodding to himself slowly. Things were hazy, but if he kept focused, he could think his way through a mental map of sorts. "_Three high, two wide. Turn right here._" The soft swish of an automatic door opening in front of him confirmed his position. "_Good, good… I can do this._" Now he just had to avoid being caught, a feat perhaps made easier by the current darkness throughout the ship.


	5. Chapter 4

**Within Your Eyes**

**Chapter 4**

**The Rhythm of Space**

"Okay, run your theory by me again." Falco Lombardi paced the darkness of the bridge, one of his feathered arms now in a makeshift sling. "I'm just not buyin' it."

"Well, to put it in a basic way, I think the warp drive somehow jumped into warp without us." Slippy Toad sat at the flight controls, a panel open before him, and the guts of the control console resting in his lap as he tinkered with it. "It must have taken the engine room with it, just sort of… yanked the whole area around it into warp with it and folded it off somewhere."

"You think there's a chance we can track it down? Maybe salvage the engines and get power back?"

"Slippy tinkered with the wiring in the control console. "No way. It has to be light years away from us by now. The hangar and life support are on their own power grid though, like the doors. We have a lot of supplies, maybe we can wait out repairs on the gate, and Corneria will send someone to check up on us."

"We don't have that kind of time." Falco pointed out the viewing window of the bridge, at Katina, the only real source of lighting for them at the moment. "No power and no engines mean no thrusters. Our orbit will decay and Katina'll pull us in. We'll be dead before help ever arrives."

"Oh… right." Slippy sighed. "But, the _Vissago_ is a big ship, right? We might be able to make a crash landing…"

"She won't burn up completely, that's for sure." Falco rested his beak on his hand, considering the idea. "I dunno, maybe we could survive a crash if we had ROB back online to help us figure out our trajectory. We still need some kind of emergency power, or thrust to let us correct ourselves on the way in. It's a start at least. How are we lookin' on getting him back?"

"Five minutes, maybe." The frog mulled over a circuit board and its wires. "I'm gonna tie the ship's computer into the emergency power. After that, we'll be pushing capacity, though, no more systems unless I take the door power off or something… This is my fault, isn't it?" He sighed loudly.

"What?" Falco was disarmed by the sudden change in subject and mood.

"I was supposed to fix the engines, and I must have made a mistake. Now we're all in trouble. I thought I fixed Krystal's Arwing, but now she…" Slippy swallowed hard, and stared at the floor, on the verge of tears.

"Hey, now, wait a minute." As de facto leader with Fox incapacitated, Falco needed his friend thinking straight. He patted the toad on the shoulder with his good hand, and tried his best at being reassuring. "That is NOT your fault, Slip. The _Vissago_'s a piece of crap, and you got it working with the tools we had on hand. It's a wonder the ship even made it here, no matter how good you are. And Krystal… she, well…" He paused, still shocked at the idea that she'd died so suddenly. "Look, you can't blame yourself. This isn't the _Great Fox_. There's no diagnostic equipment here, and there's hardly anything to even work with. How can you even tell if you got it fixed if we didn't take it out and fly it to see? It was an accident. You didn't have anything to do with it. All of this is… really bad, yeah, but nobody's to blame. I'm…" Falco strained to utter the word, "…_sorry… _for giving you a hard time about stuff. As far as I'm concerned you're a miracle worker, Slippy, and I need your help to get us out of this, okay?"

The toad stared at the dark floors for a moment. He nodded, faintly. "Okay."

"Good!" Falco patted his friend on the shoulder, kneeling down to his height and looking him in the eyes. "Now help me out here. We _need_ to get this hunk of junk to move, even a little. Without the engines, how can we do that?" His voice was tinged with a hint of growing desperation.

"We'd have to push from outside somehow. If we attach some small source of thrust to the hull in just the right spot, we might be able to re-stabilize our orbit…"

"How about my Arwing? If we took the engines out and mounted them on the side of the _Vissago_, would that work?" Falco stood up, eyeing the looming planet, so far away, yet so large already.

"Yes!" Slippy shot up in his seat, a mechanical task was the perfect thing to take his mind off of everything else. He hopped out of his chair and resumed working on the wiring at a swift pace. "You'll have to suit up for a spacewalk, we'll need to manually attach them to the hull and wire them for remote control, but we can do it! Hangar is on its own power supply, so that means the loader arm might be running, too! If it's not, I'll splice it in to the power supply; it won't take me too long to do."

"Good!" Falco paced, rubbing the underside of his beak, the excitement returning to his voice for the first time since they'd left Corneria. "Yeah, that's good! I'll go start removing the engines, you check on that loader arm, and get ROB back online!" He was out the doors and on his way without another word.

… … …

Navigation by tripping over objects had proven painful, but fruitful. Fox McCloud staggered blindly into the hangar; he couldn't see, but the change in the ambient light that filtered into his wounded eyes told him the room had power. He wasn't sure where the Arwings were, but if he followed a refueling hose, he might find one. His bruised hands searched the floor where he knelt, taking what could only be one of the fuel lines and following it along the ground all the way to its end. Unfortunately, it ended in a nozzle on the ground, and not a ship. He raised the tip to his nose and sniffed, turning his head away in sudden disgust. At least now he knew it was a fuel hose, and recently used.

"Help… help me please!"

Fox rose to his feet at the sound of the vixen's disembodied voice and instantly bashed his head against something large and unyielding directly above him. "Augh!" He crumpled to the ground, clutching his head and writhing from the sudden pain. This was hopeless! How could he find a ship if he couldn't see anything? The hangar was huge and largely empty.

Largely empty, save for the Arwings…

Fox's groans turned to weak laughter as he realized what he'd struck. Slowly he raised his hands and felt the smooth metal, the sharp angles… he rose and ran his hands along the smooth, bladelike wing. "Got it!" Literal blind luck had led him to the Arwing, or perhaps Krystal somehow had.

His blindness was no longer impairment once he sat down in the cockpit; he knew every dial, every switch, and every button inside, and exactly where they were. His fingers nimbly darted across the keypads and switches, searching for the small personal effects that identified it as his ship; instead, he found someone elses. "Sorry, Falco," He sighed, "but I'm borrowing this!" Automation proved itself to be his ally, as the hangar systems loaded the ship into a launch gantry and prepped it for takeoff.

… … …

Falco had made it as far as the door to the hangar when he heard the roar of engines. The door refused to open for him; the pressure warning light above it was on, meaning the hangar's launch systems were in action. "What's goin' on, here?"

Unexpectedly, he received an answer from ROB, who had only just come online a moment before. A speaker beside the door crackled to life as the ceiling lights flickered back on. "The hangar is currently depressurized; entry is not possible."

"What?" Falco banged on the door. "Who's in there?"

"Fox McCloud is taking off."

"WHAT!" Falco repeated himself. "How is that possible? He can't see!" The blue bird raced to the viewing window and banged the glass in frustration. "He's makin' off with MY Arwing!" The gantry ejected the small ship into space and it thrust out of sight.

"Aww, man…" Slowly, Falco stepped back and slid to a sitting position against the wall. "We're dead." He listened to the hiss of pressured air filling the hangar and it was only then that a new plan dawned in his mind. He remembered the pressurized plumes of smoke billowing from his friend's cockpit after the crash. Fox's Arwing.

Falco raced into the ranger the moment the door would unlock for him. The wrecked ship of his commander and friend was still there, in a broken heap. It would never fly again; a grim reminder of what happened only a few hours before. However, that didn't mean it might not still have working parts. The feathers at the edges of his beak upturned slightly in a faint smile.

… … …

"All stop." The hum of the Arwing's engines faded away in Fox McCloud's ears, as his borrowed fighter responded to his voice commands. He folded his hands in his lap and let the vessel drift on its own. He wanted desperately to save Krystal, to find her, help her, to prove to himself she wasn't gone. He'd gotten this far, but now he had to think. Re-entry would be easy; the nimble fighter would handle the process itself if all went well, but he had to begin the process by pushing into the atmosphere, and he wasn't sure exactly where Katina was in relation to him. Finding it without some sort of visual guidance would be almost impossible in this three-dimensional vastness.

"Son…" A male voice was in his ear, as clearly as if he were seated beside someone. It was alarming for a moment, but the voice was one he knew.

"Dad!" It wasn't possible, he knew. It was a hallucination, a side effect of the painkillers he'd been given in the medical bay. But he'd heard his father, no, seen him even, before, always when he needed help the most.

"Space may look silent and empty, son, but don't let that fool you. It has a life all its own."

These words were familiar, too… It was part of something his father had told him the day he first took him up into space, in the cockpit of his old starfighter. Fox recalled it vividly, and continued it for him. "It… has a rhythm and a flow, and everything's moving; even if you can't always see it."

That day, his father showed him all the different visual overlays the ship could display. Bands of colorful radiation, swirls of invisible energies, all made known with the help of the computer. He remembered the childlike wonder he had as he stared out into the infinite vastness with his father, watching the overlaid filters give shape and color to the forces he'd never seen or comprehended until then.

"Even if you can't see it, you can hear it. Space has a song, too." His father showed him how to tune the sensors to detect things that couldn't show up visually. They drifted high above the planet and listened to the waxing and waning chimes of the ship's sensor picking up the planet's strong gravity field again and again. They'd spent hours in the cockpit together that day; it was the day before the war broke out. It was the day before his father flew that fateful mission to the planet Venom and never came back.

Fox activated the gravity sensor in the Arwing. It was normally used to detect stealthy ships, or to warn against any dangerous small space-borne bodies that might otherwise be hard to see. The initial sound was a cacophony of tiny beeps; the debris field they had come to salvage contained enough sizable objects to confuse the sensor. Slowly, calmly, fox tuned the sensor up and down, until he only heard the directional ping of objects the size of his ship or larger.

A faint chorus of soft tones; it could only be the debris field.

A stronger, single tone; this was the _Vissago_, in orbit.

A deep, loud tone that warbled between pitches as the scanner slowly passed over it; this was Katina.

He let the scanner pass by several times, listening to the tones, mapping the area out in his mind. After he was satisfied, he turned the sensors off, and set a course he knew would bring him in to the atmosphere. His ears had guided him through the vast silence of space. He would go to Katina, and he would find Krystal, and bring her home. She would not disappear, like his father. The whole universe had vanished when he lost his eyesight, maybe forever. This tragedy he could accept, but Krystal was coming back.


	6. Chapter 5

**Within Your Eyes**

**Chapter 5**

**The Echo of Katina**

Automation again proved to be an ally to Fox McCloud in his blindness. He could listen to the raging storms all around him as his Arwing made its own controlled entry into the atmosphere of the planet. Part of him was glad he couldn't see, as the lightning crackled around his ship and the rising winds shook him. "Computer, scan for heat sources on the surface and try to pinpoint Arwing wreckage." Silence.

"Damn! Too much interference from the storms." Fox maintained his high-atmosphere altitude to avoid crashes. The _Vissago_'s scanners were magnitudes more powerful than what they had on the Arwings. If he could somehow get help from the ship, he stood a real chance of finding her. But he didn't dare go back up. They'd never let him fly back down in his condition.

… … …

"So why'd he do it?" Slippy asked, back on the bridge of the _Vissago_.

"Who knows?" Falco sat in a pile of salvaged Arwing parts, flipping through a technical manual. "Maybe the painkillers we gave him messed him up. Maybe he's gone to try to find…" His voice trailed off.

"Could she still be out there?" Slippy's voice took a hopeful tone. He still didn't want to feel that he'd accidentally played a role in the vixen's death.

"…No, Slip. I don't think anyone could have survived what happened out there." Seeing that he wasn't helping the situation, Falco tried to change the subject. "Uh, but if she is still alive out there… he'll find her. I just hope he makes it back."

"You want to try to call him again?"

Falco considered trying to contact his friend one more time. He paused for a moment in indecision. "… Nah, he won't answer. Let's just get back to work. We still need to find more parts. If we could just get a makeshift generator together and get that Arwing back, we could stabilize orbit and go scavenge parts on the planet."

"Wait a sec…" Something was beginning to dawn in Slippy's mind. "We might have spare engine parts!"

"What! Where?"

"In the boxes!" Slippy intercepted the most obvious rebuttal to his idea. "Sure, the old owners took anything of value, but who'd want some decades-old spare parts? I mean, they don't even make the engines the _Vissago_ uses anymore. Why take them?"

"Yeah… that's true." Falco rubbed the underside of his beak, in thought. "But they'd be in the engine room." He sighed a little. "And the engine room is probably in another galaxy by now."

"No!" Slippy hopped to his feet. "Fox made us clean out the engine room, remember? He said all the boxes were a fire hazard, so we put them somewhere else!"

"You mean we put the-" Falco tore the top off the nearest box and rummaged through it. "Where'd we put 'em?"

"I don't know!" Slippy joined his friend in tearing open the many unmarked boxes that littered the bridge. "We just sorta tossed everything wherever we could fit it. We never even looked at what was in them…"

"You check up here, I'll go check storage and the hallways!" Falco darted for the door, but froze at the tiny beep of the communication system. Someone was trying to call them.

"Is… is that Fox?" Slippy asked the obvious."

"No, it's your grandma, calling to check up on us. Of course it's Fox, who else would be out here with us?" Falco opened a communications channel. "This is the _Great Fox_… er, this is the _Vissago_, Falco here. Come in!"

"Falco!" Fox's voice faded in from the static. "I finally got through! Hang on a sec, I'm setting down where the signal's good!"

"Wait, what? You're on the planet? How'd you get down there?"

"Long story, I'll tell you later. For now, I need you run a planetary scan for me. Search for anything that might be Arwing wreckage, any heat sources, and stuff like that. My scanners aren't strong enough to penetrate all the storms down here."

"That… is gonna be a problem." Falco was glad to hear his friend's voice, but the looming planet outside was weighing on his nerves. "There's kind of a, uh, situation up here right now."

"What? What happened?" Fox only knew of the crash he'd been in.

"At some point, we had some kind of freak accident with the _Vissago_'s engines and warp drive; we've lost power for good this time. Our orbit's decaying and if we can't cobble together a power source or some sort of thrust, we're gonna burn up in the next few hours. So, as much as I'd like to get you that scan…"

"… Understood. I'll keep trying the Arwing's scanners. You guys work on fixing the _Vissago_." Fox quietly sighed to himself. He hadn't realized his friends were in danger or he'd never have left the ship, but in his state he'd be of no help to them. Krystal needed him more, and she was the only one he could help.

"Understood." Falco answered back. "…and you keep looking until you find her. Bring her back, okay?"

"You got it. Fox out."

"Why didn't you ask him to come back? Slippy inquired. "Don't think he'd do it?"

"Other way around. In light of how bad we may need that Arwing, I think he would have come back, if he could. But he's not giving up on Krystal…" Falco paused, finally nodding to himself. "So neither will we."

"Why is it you don't like her, Falco? It was no secret that the blue bird was reserved around his same-color teammate.

"Well, it's not that I don't like her…" Explaining his feelings had never been one of Falco's strong points, and his friends often mistook his more complex feelings for irritation or dislike. "I mean, sure, I don't like how she's just up and on the team on Fox's say-so, but it's got nothing to do with her. Either way, she's part of the team and if it were any of us out there missing or dead, she'd come looking for us. I don't see how she could be alive, much less how she could make it down to the planet after that crash, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt."

"…I hope he finds her." Slippy said quietly.

"Me too, Slip." The growing image of the planet loomed in Falco's peripheral vision. "But we can't waste any more time. Come on."

… … …

Fox sat in the sheltered cockpit of his Arwing, listening for anything that could help him. Outside, the storms that now ravaged the planet continued to rage violently. On occasion, faint sounds echoed through the cockpit, strange noises that didn't belong out in the storms. Always distant and otherworldly, never staying long enough to be identified. Fox tried to make sense of the eerie sounds, when suddenly one very clear noise rang out; a male voice.

"All right, those Arwings are providing cover fire! Reform the ranks and charge that monster! Go, go!" An explosion sounded all around him, as if it had come from inside the cockpit.

It was then that Fox realized what the strange sounds were. They were all voices and sounds of battle. Grunts, screams, gunfire, the hissing shrieks of the Aparoids; all of it was from the battle at Katina, months ago. It was all taking place where he was, but not when he was.

On board the _Vissago_, Fox had heard Krystal's thoughts, and she had heard his. He'd felt her down on the planet while he was still in space. All of it was thanks to the profound psychic presence of the Aparoid Spire that dominated the surface of the planet. He'd seen the beginnings of it being built during the battle of Katina, and it still stood mostly intact. It was responsible for the sounds, the feelings and smells that he was experiencing in his mind. All the despair, pain, suffering and hatred felt by those who'd lived and died in the terrible battle had carved a psychic groove into the surface of the planet, and the spire, like a gigantic stylus, dragged it all up and played it back again and again in mental echoes, like a broken record. Fox was no psychic, and it was frightening to him even without his eyesight. It must have been horrifying for Krystal.

That realization was enough to spur him to action again. He couldn't wait for the scans, if they ever came. He released the cockpit and bailed out the side of the stationary ship, sinking to his ankles in the mud. Pulling his jacket over his head to keep the rain and wind out of his ears, he took hold of a latch on the fuselage of the Arwing's nose. With one hard pull, the towing winch deployed from behind its panel and he took the long cable in his hands, walking with it in whatever direction he chose. It was his line back to the ship, hundreds of feet long. With it in hand he could explore on foot in a large radius and look for Krystal the old-fashioned way.

He called for her by name, announced himself, and simply shouted as he made his way through rubble, mud, and junk in every direction. When he'd exhausted his search in every direction, he went back to the Arwing and set out for a new location. Three times he repeated this process before at last, he heard a sound that gave him hope. Surprisingly, that sound was her scream.

He heard the vixen's scream clearly in his mind, even over the storm; the sudden sense of anxiety, the smell of smoke, the sensation of a sudden, hard impact, and pain. She'd crashed near here, that much was certain. Her own personal tragedy was playing back to guide him on the right direction. After a desperate search through the mud and debris, he ran his hand over a smooth surface. A quick search of the large object revealed a raised StarFox team insignia he could make out with his hands. This was it. Krystal's Arwing had undoubtedly made it to the surface at least mostly intact.

Hurriedly, Fox scrambled to the cockpit and felt through broken glass for what he feared would be a cold and lifeless body, but his reaching hands found only a torn, but empty seat. "Krystal! Where are you?" She had to be close, her Arwing was right beneath him, and she wouldn't have gone far from it if she wanted to be found. "It's me, Fox! I came to get you! If you can hear me, answer!"

A soft hand reached out ant touch his, making both he and its owner yelp in surprise. A female voice came from beside him. "It really is you… I'm sorry, Fox. I thought you were a hallucination. I… I was afraid you were dead."

Fox slid off the nose of the ship and ducked under the wing where she'd been taking cover from the storm. "I was afraid _you_ were dead, too. Falco tried to find you, but he must have missed you out in the debris field."

"Oh, your eyes…" Her hand reached out and touched his blindfold gently. "Are you…"

"No, no, I'll be okay. I need better medical care than we can get on the ship, but I'm sure I'll see again." A smile came over his face as the shock of finding her alive faded from him and his feelings returned. "It's okay, now."

Krystal gently led him under the wing, out of the rain, and put her arms around him hesitantly. "Thank you for coming to find me. But… how did you do it? How did you make it down here, through all this, if you can't see?"

The sound of battles long past died down, and only the storm was audible above. It was soothing, now, in a way. "Losing my eyesight has made me see things a lot more clearly, Krystal. I couldn't not come here." Fox returned her hug firmly, tears mingling with the rainwater that soaked his blindfold. "I was so afraid that I'd lost you… I was scared that I'd put off telling you how I felt for so long that I'd never get the chance. Every time I try to say it, I start to worry and I lose the nerve, but I promised myself that if I found you, I'd finally tell you. I…" His nerve faded again, and he choked on the words he was so frightened to admit to anyone. "I…"

Krystal had known, but had always let him try to say what he thought out loud. She had wanted him to be ready, to really commit to his feelings before she could accept them, but his actions, his determination spoke louder than any words. No one was perfect, and if he couldn't bring himself to risk rejection and say the words first, it was time to finally help him.

"I love you too, Fox. So very much."

They tightened their embrace beneath the sheltering wing of the wrecked ship, no longer alone, no longer afraid. "Thank you…"

It was a long time before they moved again. The storm had picked up, and the wind now blew the cold rain into their pathetic shelter. The time had come to go, but it was much harder to blindly fly out than in. "Krystal…" Fox began, "I think we should get out of here before it gets any worse. I can get back my Arwing, but I'm not sure I can fly us out of the atmosphere without my eyes."

"I'll be your eyes. But I can't walk with you. I hurt my leg in the crash."

"Then I'll be your legs. Come on, let's go home." Fox put his jacket over her and gently helped her out from beneath the wing. Once they were free to stand, he picked her up and carried her back to the waiting Arwing. The cockpit screen lowered and the raging storm was at last muffled. Somehow, they had made it to relative safety at last, together. Krystal sat in his lap in the cramped cockpit and helped him navigate the ship up through the hot atmosphere.

"Pull up a little more. More. Just a little more." The heat around them faded as the rumbling of the ship became a smooth glide. "That's it, now level it out. We're in space."

Fox breathed a long sigh of relief, happy to leave the ghostly world, and his emotional baggage behind. "Do you see the _Vissago_? Does it look okay?" Better to not worry her with everything else that had gone on if there was no need.

"I see it! It looks fine, turn us to port about thirty degrees and we'll be headed for it." As they drew closer, Fox could feel her lean forward. "What's that? Someone's on the hull in a space suit, they're welding something to the hull. It's Falco!"

"Good work, Falco…" Fox whispered to himself. If they were working outside the ship, then they'd found the parts they needed, somehow.

"Looks like some kind of small thrusters, he's attaching… I'll put him on the magnifier." There was a pause. "He sees us! He's staring… He's smiling, he's waving."

Fox and Krystal waved back, smiling as they drew slowly closer to home. The communicator beeped, and Fox reflexively flipped it on. "Hey, Falco."

"Unbelievable." Falco laughed, a rare sound. "Totally unbelievable, and who's that you got in there with you?"

"You know who." Fox put his arms around the vixen. "Where'd you guys find all the stuff to make that thing?"

"Eh, let's say we found an inheritance. Guess you were right, afterall. Just don't get any funny ideas while you're in my Arwing, okay? I want it back when you land." Falco paused. "Oh, and… it's good to see you're okay. That goes for both of you. You seeing this, Slip?"

"I am! Welcome back, guys! I'm glad you're okay, Krystal! I… I can't believe you made it back!" His sigh of relief was audible over the communicator. "We haven't been slouching off up here either! You ready out there, Falco?"

"Yeah, let me get clear." Falco climbed away along the hull's hand-holds and looked back at the thrusters he'd installed and wired. "Hit it!"

The ship's lights came back on and the thrusters came to life, slowly stabilizing the _Vissago_'s orbit and pushing it towards safety. "That's it! We got it! Roast bird and fried frog legs are NOT gonna be on the menu today! Now let's get Fox and Krystal home!

"You got it." Slippy's voice came in again. "You're clear to land… and welcome home."


	7. Epilogue

**Within Your Eyes**

**Epilogue**

**None So Blind…**

"We do good work, I gotta say." Falco finished the final modifications to the bridge controls and closed the access panel. Two weeks of fever-paced work had passed since the ordeals that the StarFox team had faced on arrival at Katina, but now it was coming to an end. With power and thrust restored, Falco and Slippy had taken dozens of trips down to the planet to salvage more and better parts, and soon they had upgraded the _Vissago_ to a much more serviceable level. "I think this old box might finally get up to some respectable speeds."

"How long do you estimate it'll take to get to Corneria once we set out?" Fox McCloud sat in the captain's chair, relaxing. His eye injury had gotten him out of most of the work, but it was starting to get slightly better on his own. From behind his protective sunglasses he could make out blobby colorless shapes and drastic changes in light; far better than the total darkness he'd been faced with early on. Krystal sat beside him, her leg in a simple cast. They held hands, as they had in each other's company lately; Fox explained that she was just helping him get around the ship, but no one bought it.

"If we had the warp drive?" Falco snorted. "About three minutes. On these makeshift engines? Two months."

"That's fine." Fox smiled and sunk back into his chair. "We've got the time." A faint beep beside him announced Slippy had returned from a salvage run. "Hey, Slip. Welcome back! How'd it go?"

"Pretty good!" The enthusiastic voice of the team's amphibian member crackled over the communicator."I got some good stuff with me, and a lot of it! I think one or two more runs like this and we'll be full on cargo and ready to head home. You're up next, Falco, the Arwing's all yours!"

"The Arwing IS mine, Slippy." Falco scowled. "And you better be able to get that cargo module off of it without messing it up when we're done. I'm on my way down now." He flipped the comm. switch off and headed off the bridge. "See you two sweethearts later."

Fox adjusted his sunglasses and pointed to the bridge's main view screen, where the planet Katina slowly rotated among the stars. "How's it look?"

"It's… pretty, in its own way." Krystal's hand found his again, and she squeezed it softly. "But I wouldn't want to go back there."

"Me neither." Fox smiled softly. "I'm happy staying right here, with what I already have. It's funny how things change. You lose something, you gain something." All his life, he'd taken things for granted. His friends, his future, his life, even his eyesight. Losing one, however temporarily, made him realize how valuable the others were. It took the loss of his eyes to make him see how blind he'd always been, but no more; he had a ship that flew, friends he could rely on, and a very bright future with someone he loved. "Someone, I think it was my dad, told me an old proverb once. I never understood it very well until we came out here."

"Oh? What's proverb is that?"

"_There's none so blind, as those who cannot see."_

_~fin_


End file.
